UK Paid Media Awards: In Digital & Puresport make the final

Puresport was founded by ex-professional athlete Grayson Hart, and it became the world’s first range of natural products certified for drug-tested athletes and sport professionals.

Despite the strong product line and brand positioning, the business was going through a period of stagnating sales, and they needed to think laterally about new paths for growth to reach their ambitious target: doubling their average monthly revenue, whilst maintaining consistent budgets.

Enter: In Digital.

When we started working with Puresport, the first thing we noticed was that the top-line trading figures were… well, too top-line. We suspected that pockets of insights – and subsequent untapped opportunities – were hiding away below the surface. So, our immediate recommendation was to lift the lid on their performance and delve deep into the data. 

Our Data Science team got involved, building a series of models and analysis to deep dive into three core levers for growth:

• Channel mix review and attribution study, which gave us a balanced assessment of which channels were more (or less) effective for user acquisition and retention. Marketing budget could therefore be re-allocated, doubling down on the highest performing top, middle and bottom of funnel channels, reducing wastage elsewhere.

• Churn & LTV modelling, accounting for fulfilment costs and margins, which allowed us to build a diversified audience strategy across media channels and reset the cost per acquisition for scalable growth whilst maintaining profitability. Focusing on Churn, LTV and business costs/margins was a crucial addition to the channel-side analysis, and it gave financial soundness to our recommendations. This is a great example of our team’s lateral thinking, and of how they put themselves in the client’s shoes when solving their challenges.

• Creative analysis to find the most effective assets, format and messaging sequencing to capture the attention of our core audiences and drive action.

The models and analysis gave us a lot of powerful insights, from small nice-to-knows to more substantial learnings, including what’s the most effective channel mix given the optimal balance of cost per acquisition and profitability, “next-best-product” recommendations decreasing churn rate by 50%, and much more – all which allowed us to shape the Puresport growth strategy in a new, radical direction.

Taking data and insights from paper to application is always the acid test, where the theory becomes a real-world business matter. And for Puresport, the stakes were high. We had to prove, through execution, that what we had discovered in the numbers could indeed be turned into routes to transform their business and hit their steep target.

Our Media Team took over and, thanks to their aptitude in leveraging data and creativity in all our projects, they were able to devise a multi-channel strategy that spoke to the data learnings. We put it to execution alongside Puresport own team, managing the day-to-day of the campaigns and keeping a close eye on the performance. We knew we were on the right track when results started speaking for themselves: in a few weeks we were able increase Puresport average monthly revenue by 103%, over-achieving on their target. And most impressively, we did so whilst growing the ROI by almost four times, from 3 to 11.

Success!

The multi-channel paid media execution we managed also allowed us to grow Meta sales by 206% & decrease CPA by 59%’; we also grew Paid Search sales by 28x and beat CPA targets by 35%, by rebuilding the account and increasing reach by 230%, whilst halving cpcs.

Behind the impressive results, there are great people and strong operational pillars that make it all possible. Firstly, we executed this project in true In Digital style: in-house. We hire extremely talented, multi-disciplinary people and we work as an extension of our client’s teams. Doing this puts our team in the mindset of digging deeper, thinking outside the box, not settling for average and, ultimately, acting in our client’s best interest. This approach is our most valuable ‘beyond-hard-skills-money-can’t-buy’ USP which truly transforms our client’s businesses.

Secondly, we delivered the project giving the client full access to the inner workings of the analysis and ownership of the models. Being tech-agnostic, leveraging our client’s tech stack, and transparent in our way of working are other two core pillars of In Digital. This means no software purchases required and no hidden tricks for us to be able to do our work.

In the words of Dan Temm, Puresport COO: “The partnership with In Digital really enabled us to grow at speed, playing a pivotal role in Puresport’s success story. Their expertise in data, analytics, strategy, and performance marketing, alongside their way of working as part of our structure, has provided us with platform to grow efficiently. We look forward to a continued collaboration and to seeing even greater results this year!”

This project was a true example of how the expert use of data and insights can transform a business and unlock growth. Results like these demonstrate why we at In Digital ensure that everyone on our team is comfortable with analysing performance and injecting data-driven insights into our client’s campaign optimisations.
 

We are always proud of our work, but it’s really exciting when others recognise it too. So, we’re absolutely thrilled to be finalists in the “Best Use of Data” category at the UK Paid Media Awards!